Burden
by Paranoidgirl
Summary: Ed wonders why Finn acts the way he does... The answer is far from pretty.


A/N: Just an idea that popped into my head. I find Finn a fascinating villain and always wonder how he came to look at things the way he does. Here's my attempt at fleshing him out a bit.

* * *

Things were tense ever since Finn arrived.

Hearing how he treated his men, it was no surprise that despite his everpresent upbeat, if not selfish nature, Finn could see that most, if not all of them would abandon him shortly to join the Independent Legion. And it left him irritable.

Nobody expected he'd come to blows, tough.

"A fight?" O'Brian asked, marching trough the troops towards a crowd that was gathering, Ed following in his wake. Finn was on top of one of his pilots, hitting him in the face fiercely.

"The hell is going on?!" O'Brian shouted, but Finn didn't even notice him. It took three men to pull the furious man off the private, and even with his sunglasses, Ed could see murder in his eyes.

"What is the _matter _with you?" O'Brian asked. "It's one thing to ignore and abuse your troops, but to _assault _them...!"

"Asshole had it coming!" Finn shouted. "He called me a... a _burden!" _Finn spat out that last word. As if it was the worst, most harmful thing one could call another.

"It's the truth, ain't it?!" The soldier that was just on the receiving end of a beatdown said, staggering upwards with the help of others. "You're nothing but a burden, Finn. A goddamn leech." Finn would have attacked again, if he wasn't held back by the soldiers around him. "And I'm glad I can just leave you behind."

"I am NOT a burden!" Finn shouted, a hurt that was unusual for him shining trough. "I'm a lot of things. I'm a selfish, arrogant, cowardly son of a bitch..." He whispered. "But I'm not a fucking BURDEN!"

"Seriously, Finn. You need to calm down. As a Captain, it's your responsibility to..." O'Brian tried.

"Fuck. That." Finn interrupted him. That said, he didn't seem to make any moves to jump someone's throat either. He growled. "Wasting my goddamn time here." He muttered, before stomping off.

"Don't bother with that asshole, Commander." One of the soldiers said as O'Brian just sighed. "He's planning to ditch us, anyway. Everybody's better of with that choice."

"I guess you're right. There's no place here for people like him." O'Brian conceded. Ed, however, looked at where Finn had gone, none too sure...

He eventually found Finn at a faraway fire, just outside where they made camp. The older man was staring into the flames, face unreadable.

"Beat it, kid, I don't feel like being lectured at the moment." He said as Ed approached him.

"I'm not going to lecture you." Ed said, sitting down at the other side of the fire.

"Then what the hell do you want?"

"Nothing. I was just... Just wondering why you reacted the way you did." Ed asked. This caused Finn to look up, quite surprised.

"And 'I'm an asshole' isn't enough of an explanation for you?" He said, sneering.

"There has to be something else. An outburst like that doesn't come out of nowhere." Ed insisted. Finn snorted, but sighed in defeat.

"You sure you're up for it? It's a long story." He asked. Ed just nodded. "Say. How did you get out of the Meteor Shower? Like, what was the extent of your injuries?"  
"Some scratches and bruises..." Ed said. "I got lucky." Finn just smiled, removing his sunglasses. One brown eye looked at Ed. The other was pure white, scar tissue surrounding it. He couldn't help but gasp a little, which seemed to amuse Finn.

"I didn't. The base I was in quite literally fell on top of me and left me a wreck. The eye was the least of my worries at first. But I wasn't the only survivor..."

"_Finn?! Finn?! Oh God, please be alive!" Finn could hear trough the haze he found himself in. What... happened? Fire... fire from the sky. The whole building around him collapsing and then... nothing. And now he was slowly waking up, pain pretty much overtaking his entire body and the frantic calling being his only way to hang on._

"_Dieter...?" He managed weakly. "Brother...?"_

"You have a brother?" Ed interrupted.

"Five years older. Alright guy but since we chose the same career path... he always had it in for me for some reason, always busting my ass about being the best I could be. All work and no play. But you can imagine the end of the world sweeps those sort of things to the wayside. We were stationed at the same base and miracle of miracles, we were the only two survivors. He was nearly unscathed, but I... well, like I said, I was a wreck. Broken leg, concussion, busted eye... It didn't look good. But hey, we were both still alive. That was a major boost."

_Once Dieter dug him out, the first thing he did was hug Finn tightly._

"_Easy there... Easy... In a lot of pain here..." Finn managed, as Dieter loosened his grip as the two brothers looked at each other and despite the situation, both started laughing._

"That elation was soon shattered by the situation. The entire base, no, the entire _world _was wrecked. At first we figured we at least stayed around until I got well enough to walk, but it was clear enough that the food supply we managed to find wouldn't last us that long. That and... Dieter started to change. I mean, I could get frustration with what was happening, but he just started to act so..."

"_This isn't going anywhere." Dieter said, after doing his daily check-up on his brother's leg. "No improvement over the last week. None." His tone was accusatory._

"_Listen. If I could somehow will my leg to heal faster, I would." Finn said, shifting his sitting position against a still-standing part of a wall slightly._

"_You could at least listen to me and not move!" Dieter snapped. "You need to hold still if you want your leg to heal!"_

"_Well I'm sorry for not being a Goddamn statue!" Finn snapped right back. Dieter just got up and started pacing. He did that a lot..._

"_Listen, I-I'm sorry. It's just... I don't know what to do..."_

"_I don't think anyone would know what to do."_

"But it didn't stop there. My brother was starting to fall apart... right in front of me." Finn looked down. "I couldn't do anything. Not even get up on my feet. To make matters worse, my eye got infected and gave me a blazing fever. The type where you don't know if you'll make it trough the night or not."

_Everything hurt... burned. Finn didn't know you could even get this sick. All he wanted was to just curl up in a ball, but if he did that, he'd probably aggravate his broken bones. And that would cause Dieter to yell. He was not in the mood for that._

_Trough the haze, he could feel himself lifted up and something placed against his lips._

"_Drink." His brother ordered. At first he didn't. Almost couldn't. "Drink goddamnit! You're already useless as it is. The least you could do is try to Goddamn survive." That hurt almost as much as the infection. To hear Dieter talk to him like that. As if he was a burden._

"It all came to a head the following night. I guess something... something inside of him snapped. Because that was the night he tried to kill me." Finn whispered.

"_It can't go on like this." Finn could hear Dieter whisper. "I can't stay here. I have to leave if I want to survive." What was... what was he talking about? Was he planning on just leaving him behind?  
"Dieter?" Finn weakly managed. "Brother?"_

"_There's nobody else here. Nobody to find out. He'd just be another corpse on the pile." With that Dieter turned towards him. Smiling, of all things. "It's so clear to me now." With that he went over to where Finn was laying, placing himself on top of him, hands encircling his throat. And then he started to squeeze..._

"He tried to kill you? His own brother?" Ed asked, eyes wide.

"Yep. Didn't just ditch me. Didn't just wait until the infection did the job for him. He just up and tried it himself."

"How did you survive?" This caused Finn to smirk sadly.

"Sheer dumb luck."

_Finn struggled weakly as Dieter strangled him, all the while his good eye was wide open, trying to wordlessly plead with his brother to stop. To please stop._

"_I should have done this much sooner." Dieter said. This... this broke something in Finn. Flailing to escape, he managed to find a rather large rock that he grasped as tightly as he could._

"So I took the rock and I..." Finn made a smashing motion with his hand. "Right against his temple. That threw him off me."

"_Finn...?" Dieter said, voice suddenly soft and vulnerable as he touched the bleeding wound on the side of his head. As if he was waking up from some sort of trance. "Finn, I'm sorry, I..."_

"But I didn't listen. I was in full on survival mode as I crawled on top of him and..." More smashing motions. "Kept. Hitting him. Until. He stopped. Twitching." He said inbetween said motions. His voice lost all power at this point. "Until he was dead."

_Finn was breathing heavily as he looked down at what he did. Blood smearing the rock he used as a weapon, his arms, even his face. And Dieter's face.. If the attempt of his brother to kill him or his own deed of killing his brother didn't break him, whatever he saw, did. Grasping his head, squeezing his eye shut, Finn let out a blood curtling scream._

Finn held his head, eyes closed and didn't say anything for a long, uncomfortable while.

"After that I just... shut down. Didn't do anything but lay there in the ruins, the corpse of my brother keeping me company. What could I do? I was alone, still out of it due to my injuries and overall a dead man. In another stroke of luck, a group of people traveling the wastelands found me like that. They nursed me back to health. No one asked about the fresh corpse. Suited me just fine. When I eventually got well enough, I felt... reborn in a way. I looked at this new World in a different way and made up my mind how to handle it. I got a bunch of pilots together and formed the 13th Airborne." He sighed. "So there you have it. My story." He looked at Ed, placing his sunglasses back on. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't flap your mouth about it to the rest."

"But... why? Maybe they'd understand you better. Why you look at things the way you do."

"I don't need pity for this." Finn said, looking away. "This New World isn't one of compassion. It's each man for himself and the sooner you figure that out, the better." Ed looked down, before nodding. He got up and walked away, but not before placing a comforting hand on Finn's shoulder.

"Stupid brat..." Finn whispered out of earshot as he continued to stare into the fire.

* * *

A/N: Yes, I totally used Finn's Japanese name for his brother. I really like both names.


End file.
